Hammer and Hoe, Robin DG Kelley
Hammer and Hoe, Robin DG Kelley
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Hammer and Hoe
Alabama Communists During the Great Depression

Author: Robin DG Kelley

Narrator: David Sadzin

Unabridged: 13 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/10/2020


Synopsis

A groundbreaking contribution to the history of the "long Civil Rights movement," Hammer and Hoe tells the story of how, during the 1930s and '40s, Communists took on Alabama's repressive, racist police state to fight for economic justice, civil and political rights, and racial equality.

The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.

After discussing the book's origins and impact in a new preface written for this twenty-fifth-anniversary edition, Kelley reflects on what a militantly antiracist, radical movement in the heart of Dixie might teach contemporary social movements confronting rampant inequality, police violence, mass incarceration, and neoliberalism.

About Robin DG Kelley

Author and historian Robin D. G. Kelley is one of the most distinguished experts on African American studies and a celebrated professor who has lectured at some of America's highest learning institutions. He is currently professor of American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Thelonious Monk: His Story, His Song, His Times and is best known for his books on African American culture: Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class, Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. His career spans several esteemed universities, including serving as a professor of history and Africana at New York University as well as acting as chairman of NYU's History Department. While at NYU, Kelley was one of the youngest full professors in the country at thirty-two years of age. He was also the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia and helped to shape programs at its Institute for Research in African American Studies. Kelley's work includes seven books as well as over 100 magazine articles, which have been featured in such publications as the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Code Magazine, Utne Reader, and African Studies Review.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sunny

fascinating and densely packed with largely untold history! Southern communists ahhhh......more

Much of this information is new to me, so I can't critique the book on grounds of inaccuracies, etc. A really thorough and enlightening study on communist and labour organising in the American South. This book goes a long way towards demonstrating how American anticommunism is deeply rooted in white......more

Goodreads review by David

A phenomenal work detailing the history of the Communist Party in Alabama from its inception to the beginning of World War II, a fascinating and inspiring narrative of the struggles of Black communists to overcome racism and capitalism whilst working hand in hand with the few whites not indoctrinate......more

Goodreads review by Dan

I've had this on my shelf for a long time but kept passing it over for other, seemingly more immediately relevant works. That was a shame because this book is both excellent and completely relevant to today's struggles. Drawing largely from primary sources, Kelley examines the history of radical org......more

Goodreads review by Romina

The inability to permanently organize the working class in the US South marks the historical failure of labor activists to improve the overall conditions of the working class. But the elephant in the room is actually the failure to maintain a labor movement dedicated to smashing racism within the wh......more